Routledge/UACES Contemporary European Studies

The Contemporary European Studies Series is an outlet for the publication of first-rate research in European Union Studies. The series primarily publishes research monographs but will also consider proposals for research-driven and thematic edited volumes. Although predominantly a Politics/IR and Law series, the series editors are keen to encourage approaches that are interdisciplinary. CES seeks to publish excellent material from both established and new scholars.

Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, key improvements have occurred in the democratisation of EU international relations through the increased powers of the European Parliament. Nevertheless, a comprehensive legal analysis of the new developments in democratic control of EU external…

Competing for Economic Power in Asia and the Americas

The European Union (EU) is at the forefront of engaging in external trade relations outside of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with entire regions and economic powerhouses. Understanding why and how the EU engages in one of the most active fields of external relations is crucial.
This book fills…

Achievements and Challenges

Though the EU has tried to place human rights and democracy at the heart of its external action, there are serious concerns about its capacity to have a significant impact on the situation of human rights and human rights defenders as well as on the democratization processes taking place in…

The Emergence of a New Sphere of Opposition

As the EU enters an increasingly uncertain phase after the 2016 Brexit referendum, Euroscepticism continues to become an increasingly embedded phenomenon within party systems, non-party groups and within the media. Yet, academic literature has paid little attention to the emergence of, and…

Adjusting Europe to Germany

This book examines the politics of Banking Union and EMU reform in the EU, and draws lessons for what it means for international politics, both in Europe, and for international relations more broadly. It demonstrates that most of the reforms in Europe to break free of the Eurozone and banking…

Inception, Establishment and Consolidation

The creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s new diplomatic body, was accompanied by high expectations for improving the way Europe would deal with foreign policy. However, observers of its first years of operation have come to the opposite conclusion.
This book explains…

Power and Conflict in a Dualist Political Economy

Successive Enlargements to the European Union membership have transformed it into an economically, politically and culturally heterogeneous body with distinct vulnerabilities in its multi-level governance.
This book analyses core-periphery relations to highlight the growing cleavage, and potential…

Ideas do not float freely

This book collects Thomas Risse's most important articles together in a single volume. Covering a wide range of issues – the end of the Cold War, transatlantic relations, the "democratic peace," human rights, governance in areas of limited statehood, Europeanization, European identity and public…

Fighting for Energy

The Dynamics of EU External Energy Relations examines the behaviour of the European Commission in EU external energy relations paying particular attention to the dynamics existing between the Commission and the member states. It examines the Commission as a constrained policy-entrepreneur trying to…

Emerging Challenges and Political Agents

While the European integration project is facing new challenges, abandonments and criticism, it is often forgotten that there are powerful legal instruments that allow citizens to protect and extend their rights. These instruments and the actions taken to activate them are often overlooked and…

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have…

Socialization, negotiations and disaggregation of the state

EU foreign and defence policy is largely formulated in the working parties and committees of the Council of the EU and the vast majority of decisions in this field are made by the national diplomats working in the around 35 groups of the CFSP/CSDP.
Although the importance of these committees and…

Beyond the “Actorness and Power” Debate

This ground-breaking volume provides a new perspective on the EU’s foreign policy and offers a reconstruction of EU research that extends beyond narrow-minded concepts of ‘power’ and ‘actorness’. Focusing on two intertwined research questions, it presents a more sustainable base for studying EU…

Ukraine between Brussels and Moscow

Regulatory reforms in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood countries are not as sluggish as often perceived. Rule enforcement is happening despite the presence of domestic veto players who favour the status quo, the lack of EU membership perspective and the presence of Russia as an alternative governance…

Today, the European Union faces challenges that threaten not only internal cohesion but also its position in the global system. This book is about the future of the EU in the light of global power transition taking place in the twenty-first century and demonstrates how its future rests on a…

Problem-solving and European identity-formation

The post-Cold War era saw an unexpected increase in intra-state violence against ethnic and religious groups, brutal civil wars and asymmetric conflicts. Those crises posed fundamental questions for the European Union and its member states, to which Europe has so far proven unable to develop…

The case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This book examines lobbying in EU foreign policy-making and the activities of non-state actors (NSAs), focusing on EU foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It sheds light on the interactions between the EU and NSAs as well as the ways in which NSAs attempt to shape EU foreign policies…

Several years after the first Greek bailout, the integration project of the European Union faces an interlocking set of political, economic, legal and social challenges that go to the very core of its existence. Austerity is the order of the day, and citizens in both debtor and creditor states…

The Contested Neighborhood

Russia's impact on EU policy transfer to the post-Soviet space has not been as negative as often perceived. EU policies have traveled to countries and issue areas, in which the dependence on Russia is high and Russian foreign policy is increasingly assertive.
This book explores Russia's impact on…

The Nordic and Baltic States and the ESDP

This volume analyzes the Nordic and Baltic states' relationship with the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP).
Clive Archer presents a general background to the European Union's ESDP, the strategic situation of Northern Europe, the main security and defence policy issues faced by the states…

The Dynamics of Europeanization and Multilevel Governance

This book explores the interaction of the EU in Greece, Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia in three key policy sectors – cohesion, border managements and the environment – and assesses the degree to which the European Union’s engagement with the democracies of South East Europe has promoted…

Committee decision-making in the EU Council of Ministers

The Council of Ministers is one of the most powerful institutions of the European Union (EU) and plays a major role in the European policy-making process. Drawing on formal theory and combining quantitative and qualitative methods in an innovative fashion, this book provides novel insights into the…

Conditionality, legitimacy and compliance

The Balkan countries have responded differently to the EU’s conditional offer of membership. This book examines the diverging compliance patterns of the Balkan accession states and asks why some of them have complied substantially, some only partially and others have defied the EU.
The book…

Banking, Securities and Post-Trading

The global financial crisis that reached its peak in late 2008 has brought the importance of financial services regulation and supervision into the spotlight.
This book examines the governance of financial services in the EU, asking who governs financial services in the EU, how and why, and…

Effectiveness and Legitimacy in European Commission Committees

The European Commission has increasingly focused on the benefits it can derive from the greater participation of organized civil society in its role and activities. In the face of general decline in public trust in the institutions of government, it facilitated and encouraged new channels of access…

Roles, Institutions, and Policies

Conflict prevention and crisis management has become a key activity for the EU since the creation of the Common Security and Defence Policy in 1999. The rapid growth of this policy area, as well as the number of missions deployed beyond the EU’s border raise important questions about the…

National Party Influence and Legislative Empowerment

This book analyzes the development of the European Parliament’s (EP) committees and their relationship with national political parties in the light of the EP’s increased legislative role over the last three decades.
The book argues that national parties have a greater incentive to care about what…

Until recently, the European Union tended to view violent mass conflicts predominantly through the lens of negotiations between conflict leaders and powerful external actors. Today, the EU has begun to recognize the imperative of understanding and influencing developments on the ground in conflict…

Iceland's Participation in the EU's Policy Process

This book examines Europeanization in the European Economic Area (EEA), exploring whether non-member states can have an input into EU decision-making and whether the EU can successfully export its policies within the framework of the EEA.
Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, while not EU member…

European Capitals of Culture and European Union since the 1980s

Culture is one of the most complex and contested fields of European integration. This book analyzes EU cultural politics since their emergence in the 1980s with a particular focus on the European Capital of Culture program, the flagship of EU cultural policy. It discusses both the central as well…

Europeanization or Business as Usual?

The book investigates the scope and limitations of the transformative power of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans.
The extension of EU enlargement policy to the region has generated high expectations that enlargement will regulate democratic institution-building and foster reform, much as it did…

Domestic preference formation, transgovernmental networks and the dynamics of compromise

This book provides a detailed examination of the complex negotiation processes surrounding intergovernmental conferences in the European Union.
Since the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) and its ‘appendix’, the Treaty of Nice in 2002, any reform of the constitutional framework of the European Union…

A comparative study

Different survey-based and case study research has shown that, since the 1980s, minority nationalist parties have become increasingly supportive of European integration. However, this account of minority nationalist party attitudes towards Europe is problematic in several respects. This book makes…

Interest Mediation, Capitalism and EU Policy Making

The delegation of policy-competencies to the European Union has changed the context in which national actors form their interests and represent them. Shaping European markets and societies, EU regulation has important effects in the member states. This book analyses how business interest…

Climate change poses one of the biggest challenges facing humankind. The European Union (EU) has developed into a leader in international climate change politics although it was originally set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’ in which decision-making powers are spread amongst EU institutional, member…

The Politics of Foreign Aid

The European Union is a leading actor in international development, providing more than half of the world’s foreign aid, but also a unique case, combining the characteristics of a bilateral and a multilateral donor. Despite the general acknowledgment that policy coordination substantially improves…

Media, Public and Elite Perceptions of the EU

A central problem for the European Union is said to be that of the "politics of identity". Within this, the concept of the EU’s international identity requires exploration in terms of how it is both constructed and represented globally.
To address this issue, this book identifies measures and…

Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity 1950-72

This book radically re-conceptualises the origins of the European Union as a trans- and supranational polity as it emerged between the Schuman Plan of May 1950 and the first enlargement of the European Communities at the start of 1973.
Drawing upon social science theories and debates as well as…

Dilemnas of differential treatment in theory and practice

From bans on religious symbols in public spaces, to the provision of abortion by doctors, recent cases across Europe have highlighted acute dilemmas about how best to respond to the claims of individuals or groups feeling that their values or beliefs are not treated fairly by the law.
Diversity in…

A Comparative Analysis

This book fills a gap in academic literature on the politics and public policy aspects of central banking in Europe, by conducting a theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded analysis of central banking governance before and after the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).…

The Liberal Drift of Multilevel Governance

This book contributes to the literature on the change of governance in the context of its European multilevel organization. The integration of Europe is a process of fundamental social change: a process of constructing a European society and of deconstructing the national societies.
Münch…

Anchoring Democracy?

Do external factors facilitate or hamper domestic democratic development? Do international actors influence the development of greater civil and political freedom, democratic accountability, equality, responsiveness and the rule of law in domestic systems? How should we conceptualize, identify and…

Promoting Peace in the Backyard

Through the study of five ethno-political conflicts lying on or just beyond Europe's borders, this book analyzes the impact and effectiveness of EU foreign policy on conflict resolution.
Conflict resolution features strongly as an objective of the European Union's foreign policy. In promoting this…

Anti-Europeanism Examined

This book provides an innovative examination of the European Union as it departs from its path of integration. Indeed, so far has it departed that it could be described as having entered a new reality. The original reality was that captured in the evocative phrase in its founding agreement, the…

Issues and Strategies

This study addresses many of the key issues raised by the increasing expansion of the EU. Analysing the traditional 'Community method' of espansion and finding many shortcomings with its ability to handle future enlargement, Chris Preston explores:* the past experience of enlargement and the…

Relations with Developing Countries

At the end of the current millenium the best description of Europe's relations with the developing countries of the South is: all change. Since 1957 the European Community has operated special policies for developing countries, many of which were formerly European colonies. However, neither the…

An ideal introductory text for students studying the EU, International politics and organisations, or economics: Laffan clearly explains the evolution and extent of European integration in areas ranging from industrial development to international relations and considers the problems that new…